Last night, during round 20 of the Democratic pseudo-debates in Cleveland (which I nickname RABID MSNBC DOGS ATTACK HILLARY), Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sparred about health care, NAFTA, and Iraq. It was absolutely (yawn) electrifying. The candidates staked out their clear differences on the issues. In summary:

Now that the NY Times phony sex/lobbyist scandal about John McCain has been exposed for the fraud it was, the left is on to it's next attempt to undermine McCain's candidacy, which has caused one of my favorite political standup comedians, Howard Dean, to return to the news this week. Dean is most remembered as the 2004 Democratic presidential frontrunner for about 10 minutes, until people realized he was insane. Upon discovering his lunacy, Democrats did the logical thing, and made him the head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). You can go here for some classic dumb Dean quotes. Here's a sample of Howie's brilliance :

Maybe it was all those Obama-Clinton-Edwards-Kucinich-whatstheirnames Democratic debates. Maybe it was listening to our messiah Obama at Youngstown State University the other day. Maybe it was Michelle Obama, a Harvard and Yale graduate who has benefited so greatly from what this country has to offer, saying that Barack's success provided her with the first occasion in her adult lifetime to be proud of her country. Maybe it was reading the

I attended the Barack Obama campaign rally yesterday afternoon at the Beeghly Center at Youngstown State University. The house was filled to capacity and the crowd was enthusiastic, though there was no swooning or fainting (consequently, larry d, I was unable to determine if the Reverend was in attendance). The crowd consisted predominantly of young people, no surprise, since the event was held on a weekday afternoon at a university. The Obama keyword, 'change', appeared on banners and signs throughout the gymnasium. I didn't record the event, so when I quote Obama, I might not be 100% word for word accurate. Please grant me that small indulgence.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Of The House Of Representatives, had a decision to make last week. Should she bring the new FISA bill to the floor for a vote, where it would certainly pass and be signed into law immediately by President Bush, or should she prevent the bill from being voted upon, thereby allowing the Protect America Act to expire, weakening our country's ability to gather intelligence against foreign terrorist groups like Al Qaeda ?

When I heard that the Comptroller General and head of the Government Accounting Office (GAO), David Walker, has resigned, I had to write about it. Walker was one of my favorite guys in government, probably due to the fact that he's not a politician. He was the chief accountant for the federal government. He's beholden to no political party. Walker was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1998, and continued serving through the Bush administration until now.

Thursday was supposed to be a day when the House Of Representatives worked on the updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has already passed the Senate. The existing bill, the Protect America Act, passed last august, expires at midnight on saturday, february 16th. Rather than working on anything so mundane as protecting americans from terrorists, the House Democrats decided instead to vote on contempt charges for White House officials Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten for not appearing before Congress on the Democrats fishing expedition investigation into the White House firing of U.S. attorneys. Minority leader John Boehner led Republicans in a House walkout in protest. Boehner said:

I've been reading some dangerous and subversive writings lately. I have to share some of it with you, because I think these radical views could upset our liberal democracy if they become mainstream. Get a load of this claptrap:

John McCain is not the Conservative choice for president, but he will be the Republican nominee. Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney split the conservative vote, thus allowing McCain to move to the front by capturing the moderate and independent votes. As Mitt Romney noted during his CPAC speech yesterday, where he suspended his presidential campaign, McCain has received 4.7 million nationwide primary votes to Romney's 4 million. McCain won 13 states to Romney's 11 states. Imagine what those numbers would be had Huckabee not been in the race, siphoning off a substantial portion of the Conservative base vote, a vote that would surely have favored Romney over the "maverick" (read "often liberal") McCain. We'd probably have a Republican frontrunner named Mitt right now, instead of a candidate that has Conservatives holding their noses, or, much worse, thinking about voting for Hillary in an act of defiant self-destruction.

Here we are, the day before Super Tuesday, when presidential primary elections will occur in 24 states. In the Republican party, most of those states are winner-take-all competitions. The winner gets all the delegates. The second place finisher gets nothing. Super Tuesday should settle the question of who the Republican nominee will be. So, does our media offer anything enlightening, like maybe an issue by issue comparison of the candidates positions in the newspaper, or maybe biographies of the candidates, to help any undecided voters make a last minute decision ?

Last thursday's Democratic debate on CNN between Hillary and Obama is being called the 'nice debate'. That's nice. Obviously, we don't want candidates arguing during a debate about who the next leader of the world's lone superpower will be. We should be nice. Have a nice day. Make love, not war. You can find a transcript of the nice debate here if you're interested.

I submit to you that Hillary Clinton is NOT a leader, is dishonest, and for those reasons should NOT be the next president of the United States. Most of you already know this. This is for the few who don't. Her continuous lying about Iraq, for the sole reason of garnering votes, proves the point. Her non-stop shucking and jiving on the war, her myriad poll-driven positions on the same, all point to a woman devoid of principle, but one consumed with the hunger for power. Look at her history regarding Iraq.

The number of lawyers seeking the Democratic presidential nomination has been reduced from three to two. The ambulance chasing lawyer is out. The coattail riding lawyer and the civil rights lawyer remain. The coattail rider is the frontrunner for the moment, and has the edge in experience, having both 35 years of coattail riding plus seven years in the Senate. The civil rights lawyer has only three years in the Senate, but at least he didn't earn his Senate seat because of his last name, like the coattail rider did. He earned it the old-fashioned way (his primary opponent, who was leading, self-destructed amid allegations of domestic abuse, and his opponent in the general election withdrew due to a sex scandal, leaving him virtually unopposed, with Alan Keyes jumping in as 11th hour opposition with no chance of winning). The Democratic party had tagged the civil rights lawyer for greatness even before he won his Senate seat by default however, by making him the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He is the anointed candidate of change, and the future of the Democratic party. The Kennedy family has endorsed him, and Caroline Kennedy said he reminds her of her father, JFK. Visions of a new Camelot are dancing in Democratic heads. Never mind that Caroline also said John F. Kerry reminded her of her father back in 2004 (Must be the initials in the name, because I can't think of any other resemblence there).